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According to statistics by Forrester Research, at least 89% of marketers use email as their primary lead generation channel. This goes to show that direct mail marketing is still a relevant tool, both for B2C and B2B purposes.

And with the introduction of new conveniences in digital marketing, we can all say it would take long before email marketing fades away. Acquiring new clientele is still possible through this channel – only if you have nurtured and streamlined your email components.

While email continues to be a widely used lead generation platform, there are still many marketers (mostly SMEs) that struggle with attaining higher response rates from cold leads. We can blame this on several factors, but this ultimately boils down to proper planning and execution.

Indeed, many businesses often wonder they are not getting enough traffic despite a high send out volume. It could be that the content of these messages lack important qualities.

If you are leading a business that confronts similar issues, consider these tips for creating emails that go straight to your audience’s heart – and not their spam folders.

Give a sense of urgency. Why should your prospects respond to you in the first place? It has been revealed that people react more to messages that present certain issues. Thus, it would be better if you present a specific problem, usually in the form of a question in the likes of “Having trouble with poor sales? Talk with us.”

Personalize your emails. The Aberdeen Group showed that personalized emails, or messages that take into account the needs of specific groups of decision makers, “improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10%.” So, try to focus on creating your content based on important details about an individual prospect, such as industry, company size, budget, and position.

Simplify your language. The tricky part with email marketing is constructing compelling calls-to-action in as few words as possible. Now, you may want to provide your prospects with all the information they need, but there is a need to reserve this part for the sales appointment. For now, provide your emails with simple and clear language. Sticking to this principle keeps your audience listening.

Have someone handle it for you. Emails bridge the gap between customer awareness and engagement. It would, however, require expert proficiency and analytical skills in digital marketing to facilitate the transition. This can be achieved through a reliable B2B lead generation company.

Email marketing is not dead, but over the years, a few unsavory email marketing behaviors have soured a lot of recipients to the email messages that were filling up their inboxes. On the other hand, consumers jump for joy when they actually get an email that is interesting, helpful or innovative.

There’s an art on how to craft an email newsletter that recipients will actually read, so we’ve put together ten examples of some awesome email marketing ideas that may convince you to reexamine how you think about using email today:

1. Ecommerce Email Marketing

Truly great companies are always changing and evolving, and it’s something your customers expect. What they don’t expect is to be told ahead of time about those changes. It’s unusual indeed if you’re going to change the way you communicate with a lead or customer, to give them clear and fair warning. That way, if they aren’t happy with the proposed changes, they’ll just make the necessary adjustments to keep their inbox clean.

2. A Sense of Urgency

You should create a sense of urgency with a call-to-action. If it’s done right, that’s what makes a lead take action. However, often, the call-to-action is positioned in such a way that makes urgency look like being pushy.

3. The Compliment Sandwich

There’s nothing better than asking for as well as receiving feedback from your users, even if they aren’t exactly a power user. In fact, the power users are often the ones who can make your product or service even better. They have identified roadblocks to success that other leads and customers might be facing.

4. AmazonLocal

Email from AmazonLocal is short and sweet, with only one call-to-action. When you click through email you can tell them what you like and dislike. That way, the deals they send you in the future can be more in line with what you are more likely to actually want.

5. ModCloth Style Whiz Quiz

AmazonLocal’s method of to personalize email content is very effective, but props should be given to e-retailer ModCloth with its Style Whiz Quiz email. The end results are precisely the same, both ModCloth and AmazonLocal know what their email recipients like, and they can better segment their email lists in order to provide more relevant content. But ModCloth’s email lets recipients take a fun survey to get their answers.

6. Focus Pointe Global

Focus Pointe Global provides focus groups so your business can get some meaty market research. Their email asks you to participate in one of their online surveys, and it’s the simplest email you could possibly imagine. All of the information you need to know to determine whether you want to participate is called out in bold, with extremely short copy that explains everything immediately afterward.

7. Zipcar

Zipcar’s abandonment email calls the reader back to their website with some lighthearted copy that nudges you in the right direction. It also reminds them of the value of using Zipcar, being so economical and helping our planet. If the visitors to your site are abandoning shopping carts or landing pages, then use your email marketing in this same way to remind them that they have some unfinished business on your website.

8. ModCloth Referral

If you have a referral program, do your customers know about it? ModCloth’s recognizes that even engaged customers might not know you offer referral benefits. Email marketing can be ideal for ongoing communication with prospects and engaged leads, never forgetting about keeping them in the know.

9. UncommonGoods Lets Customers Sell

UncommonGoods leverages the power of social proof to beef up their Mother’s Day email marketing campaign. This email provides recommendations for those who struggle to decide on a gift, but it also can highlight what other customers have to say about them.

10. Zizinya Web Solutions

Zizinya Web Solutions uses email in one of its lead nurturing email series, and it’s a great example of a principle that so many email marketers forget: Your inbox recipients don’t always remember who you are.

Use a reminder somewhere in the first paragraph of your email to tell the reader who you are and why they are being contacted. Reminders like this are critical to preventing deletions and unsubscribes.

These are just ten examples of some unusual email marketing ideas that may help convince you to reexamine how you think about using email in today’s marketing universe. Try some or all of them in your next marketing push. You might be pleasantly surprised at the results.

About the Author:

Timm Danny

Timm is a content editor @ Key Difference. He is passionate about SEO service, technology, email marketing services, etc. He wishes to share his knowledge with others and jump into blogging.

While many books, articles, and blog posts have been written on how to effectively use this strategy to achieve marketing goals, little attention has been paid to the importance of being better at receiving and processing email.

Here are some tips to help you process email more competently, save precious marketing time, and lower the office hassle:

1. Don’t let email be in command of you

The inherent instant gratification of clearing your inbox provides a brief feeling of accomplishment, but it’s really not productive. Doing email is just one part of work. Determine how much time you want to spend in your inbox on a given day, and don’t exceed it.

When you first open your inbox in the morning, star/flag emails that must be dealt with today, but make sure to focus on your top priorities first before diving into your inbox.

Dedicate 30-minute blocks every two hours to staying on top of email. If you need more time, make it 45-minute blocks, but it’s critical to not let your Inbox control you.

2. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize

When you do make it to your Inbox, it’s key to remember that not all emails are created equal. Most email clients give each email the same amount of real estate on the screen, making it hard for our brain to be discriminating, creating a tendency to give each email the same amount of attention upfront.

In reality, not all emails are created equal. Some need to be read and responded to right away (important and urgent priorities). Some can wait until later (important but not urgent priorities). Others should be archived or deleted in bulk.

Yes, some emails will never be responded to, and that’s OK in the world of limited time and resources. Start with your top opportunities, and make sure you dedicate enough time to them. Even if you don’t get to the smaller stuff, you’ll feel great that you went after your top leads and gave them your best.

3. Be decisive

When checking your email, decide what to do with each email immediately:

Every day, billions of emails swim across the vast information highway right above our heads and inside the fiber-optic cables below the ground. For marketers, it’s a battlefield, and sometimes we tend to forget about the competition and become contented with mediocre emails.

And then we wonder why we never get good responses from prospects.

In order to gain attention, emails need to stand out from a barrage of other marketing mails. If your current email format is outdated and uninviting, you may need to consider total alterations and see how significantly it affects prospect responses.

Be concise and crunchy. Get rid of wordy paragraphs and tall tales. Emphasize only the important things, based on the target audience and how your company is viewed by the industry. Ditch the parts that readers would normally skip.

Dazzle from the onset. Your reader must be hooked into reading your email even after just a few lines, just like evoking a feeling when they’ve just received a letter from a dear friend. Keep it relaxed and try not to sound too official.

Urge interaction. Ask questions. Make them share opinions. Allow them to participate in polls. Your email doesn’t have to be a one way street. Giving them something that encourages them to respond obviously increases your chances of click-throughs and conversions.

Deliver what is promised. If the email says “Get a Free Demo” and clicking a button would route them to a page where they have to fill-out an enormous form, make sure you follow-through with what was offered. Do not lure them into lead-capture traps without giving them something to take away.

Don’t put too much links. While links can do help in shortening an email, putting unnecessary URLs or other external addresses can also smear its overall appearance. Only provide links to useful content, such as industry information, subscription pages, or social media connections.

Follow-up quick. You don’t have to wait for a couple of days to check on the progress of an email campaign. Create a follow-up system that monitors on a regular basis the development of responses and to normalize an already-established line of communication. This ensures that no opportunity goes by un-grabbed.

Everybody loves social media, and more people are getting into blogging. But despite all this, email still remains as the go-to strategy in any marketing campaign. It never fails to deliver a goal, whether it’s leads, active interactions, warm business relationships, and even for new professional acquaintances. It simply is the most basic communication line in the corporate world.

But while its effectiveness isn’t diminishing, the attention that it used to enjoy is now facing tough competition; prospects now have more things to attend to compared to 5 years ago, and that lessens the odds of emails being read at an optimum time.

GetResponse, an email marketing software firm (www.getresponse.com), analyzed more than 21 million emails in the first quarter of 2012. These are some of their findings:

23.63 percent of all emails are opened within the first hour; that number drops off precipitously as the hours tick by;

Most emails are sent from 6 a.m. to noon; the least amount occurs from midnight to 6 a.m.

The hours that see the most click-throughs are 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., and 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.

The hours that see the most opens are 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., and 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.

According to the study, the best time to send emails is when “customers are reviewing their inboxes”. This usually happens more during mornings and early afternoons. However, because of the apparent change in lifestyle of today’s generation, some factors may affect the open rates of emails.

In theory, an email sent between 3-4 p.m. (according to the study statistics) has a 23.63% chance of being opened in the first hour after it was delivered. But in reality, at 5:00 p.m. people are actually on their way home, or stuck in traffic. Between the hours of 6-8 p.m., they would be doing house chores and eating dinner, and the next time they would probably have time to check their emails again would be after 8 p.m. The problem is, 4 hours after delivery, the open rate chances have already dropped to less than 5%, in theory.

Still, according to the study, most emails appear in inboxes in the morning; hence, those emails sent in the afternoon have more chances being noticed, opened and clicked. For maximum open and click-rates, schedule emails to land in inboxes no later than 1 hour before top open times, and that’s 8-9 a.m. and 3-4 p.m. The key is to not let your message lose impact by waiting too long in the inbox.

Justin Bridegan of MarketingSherpa shares 4 things he learned from writing a lot of email copy:

Having written close to 1,000 emails for MarketingSherpa promoting our marketing products over the past few years, I’ve learned a couple of things I thought I would share with you, many of them from my own mistakes.

At Summits, when people recognize my name from their inbox, they ask, “What have you found that works?” What a loaded question, right?

I’ve felt much like Edison, but with a marketing spin on it. I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways on how to not write an email.

Much like you, my writing over time has evolved to include some semi-universal best practices which many of us are familiar with, but sometimes get lost in the marketing translation from company logic to customer logic. So, here is a quick refresher.

Tip #1. Write your copy with the understanding that your audience is likely not reading, but skimming

It’s been said most people are either “filers,” who create a specific file folder for each email, or “pilers,” who let the inbox pile up with no hope in sight. Either way, your message is up against an already overflowing inbox. Standing out – and quickly – is the only hope you have.

I’m not saying all email messages have to be short, but they should be readable in a skim format. Your audience should be able to understand the main message in five to 10 seconds. Subject lines should be point first or last, not middle. Intro paragraphs should also be short and lead into the body copy, usually three sentences or less. Overall, you should test your email subject lengths to know what your audience prefers to read.

Tip #2. Stop selling to your audience and offer real value

Nobody enjoys being bombarded with product offerings and specials. Don’t get me wrong, we all like a good deal, just not all of the time and not every day. Your emails should be an ongoing conversation and always offer real value. Ask yourself, “Does this pass the ‘so what’ test?” If not, then scrap what you have and start over.

Use benefit-focused language such as “Get” or “Receive” without making them think about all of the things they have to do. You need to build some trust with your audience and make sure you provide an email address so they can respond with feedback.

Tip #3. Clarity is the key

Have you ever read an email and not understood what they were trying to say? I know I have. From internal acronyms nobody outside the office understands to copy containing three or four calls-to-action, too much clutter is a conversion killer.

Focus on one key benefit, map it to their pain point and solve it. Your email tone should convey a helpful and friendly voice. Never use words that don’t convey value, like “Submit,” or “Click.” When possible, provide more clarity and quantify your message. For example, use “Get instant online access to all 32 marketing search journals” instead of “Download now.”

Tip #4. Don’t take my word for it – test

What works for one company doesn’t always work for another. The only true way to know what works in your messaging is to test. For the MarketingSherpa audience, those who have purchased from us in the past tend to like short, right to the point emails, while new sign-ups tend to like more visual and lengthy copy. It is about tailoring your messages.

We’ve gleaned these insights from A/B testing. Before you implement any of my tips, I suggest you test them with your unique audience and product to see if they also work for you.

Even though email can be considered “ancient” in internet terms, it still remains one of the most effective means to find business sales leads online. You would be missing out on a lot of potential customers if you haven’t been utilizing this lead generation tool enough. So why is email marketing so enduring and successful, compared to other online marketing tools that have risen and fallen out of favor with marketers?

Email is rudimentary. Every single person who uses the internet has an email address, and it is most likely the online communication tool used daily and comfortably by your Singapore business leads. Even technologically-challenged business owners make it a point to know how to send and receive an email.

Email is more about business. More so than any other social media platform available today. If you want to be taken seriously by your prospects, sending them an official email is the way to go.

Emails marketing is not constrained by the boundaries of branding. No matter what email service provider you have, sending an email to your prospects is basically the same process.

Email carries with it the expectation of a product or service offer. This means that your sales leads know that you’re selling them something with your mail, and if they open it, then it means they’re interested in making a purchase!

Businesses that need more Singapore sales leads should start to seriously focus on their email marketing, and if your marketing team are already preoccupied with a different lead generation campaign, then you might want to consider outsourcing to a BPO company to oversee your email blast campaigns for you. Having this marketing tool in conjunction with other marketing plans such as telemarketing or social media marketing will surely provide your Singapore business with a steady source of quality business to business leads.

About Us

Founded in 2004, Callbox has evolved into a specialist provider of Multi-Touch Multi-Channel Marketing solutions for businesses and organizations worldwide. Its core competencies include Lead Generation, Appointment Setting, Lead Nurturing and Database Services, delivered through its proprietary marketing automation platform, the Callbox Pipeline.

Callbox enables companies gain a foothold in their priority markets by initiating conversations with decision makers through the efficient and intelligent use of targeted touchpoints over six channels: voice, email, social, chat, website and mobile.